


Eternal Beauty

by brutti_ma_buoni



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: F/M, POV First Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-26
Updated: 2016-10-26
Packaged: 2018-08-27 05:44:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,990
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8389459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brutti_ma_buoni/pseuds/brutti_ma_buoni
Summary: Just another mission. Just another creepy, empty, bloody apartment. Just another- Oh bloody hell. Maybe not so empty.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is for Spook Me ficathon, where I asked for vampire prompts to see if I could get writing Buffy again. I could, sort of. This is post-series in some nebulous Council setting where Buffy and Spike are together, if perhaps a little warily at times. In my head it was probably in NYC, but I suspect you can’t tell. The one I used was [this beautifully grim image](http://s879.photobucket.com/user/spook_me/media/Spook%20Me%202016/013-conceptual-illustrations-michael_zps6p6hdlf0.jpg.html), which is kind of a spoiler for the first part of the story and also really, really bloody. 
> 
> Additional warnings that aren't in AO3 criteria: the Spike/Dru part has plenty of Spike killing people, if that bothers you. Also much blood, distant suicidal thoughts.

It was a crappy plastic tub. I couldn’t rate it. If you’re going to do… what this vamp had done… you have to do it with style, see? Otherwise it’s just a waste of good resources, and a soggy mess. 

The Slayer was looking at it like she wouldn’t appreciate my point. Big on the horror and revulsion, not so focused on the aesthetics. Times like this, I know the soul hasn’t fixed me up entirely. 

Not that she was wrong, don’t think that. Revolted disgust was totally the emotion to be having, in that place, looking at that thing. I just lost my revulsion a while back, and for a long while, I _was_ the horror. Bit hard to act all handwringing grossed-out at my time of life. After my life, at least.

“Is there someone _in_ there?” she asked. Like that’d make it worse. 

“Doubtful.” I nodded to the obvious footprint trail leading away from the tub. “Reckon your occupant scarpered a while back.” Wrong verb, honestly. The footprints were languorous, and sauntering. Scared, the ex-bather had not been.

“I meant someone dead,” said the Slayer. Oh. Hadn’t thought of that, though you couldn’t be sure, in all that mess, that the bath was entirely uninhabited. 

But a vamp has his pride. Never say you never thought of an angle, is my motto these days. “So did I,” I pointed out. “Dead and ambulant, which is a tad more urgent, don’t you reckon?”

The Slayer’s still a human, underneath all that power. Sometimes I forget that. She couldn’t look away from the tub, and finally I walked over, sniffed hard. Not that I’d expected to be able to tell anything from that – far too many competing stenches to discern a corpse under liquid. But again, a vamp has his pride. And his mystique. Got to keep harping on your own special, when you’re surrounded by superwomen and do their bidding on the regular. Loving devotion’s one thing, but obedient submission has never been my style. 

(Don’t look at me like that. What a vamp chooses to do recreationally with his lady-love doesn’t come into professional discourse, okay?)

Nothing for it, though. I sighed, and shed my duster. Rolled up my sleeve, and stuck my arm into the cloudy tub. Swish, swoosh, cautiously – this place was filthy enough there could have been all sorts in there, with broken glass and drowned spiders the best of the likely nasties. After a bit, I stopped, shrugged. “Nope. Nothing in here. Nothing chunky, anyway. You want I should pull the plug?” Might as well get it over with. The tub contents were soaking my cuff, where I’d underestimated the depth of the tub, or maybe overestimated the length of my arms. (Don’t laugh.)

“No!” she shouted. “That’s… evidence.”

“Slayer,” I sighed. “Nobody’s getting prosecuted. And nobody’s going to work out who they were. Not with all this blood.”

“You don’t know that,” she said, defiant.

I sighed again, harder. I hate doing this to her. Goes way beyond mystique. “Slayer, you think I never filled a tub with the blood of virgins for my eternal beloved’s bath? You need a hell of a lot of virgins even for a crappy tub like this. Thirty-odd, minimum. Nobody’s gonna split up this lot into the innocent dead and give them decent burial, okay?”

She tried, but I could see her getting pinched-white around the lips. She hadn’t thought of the numbers. Sometimes, the Slayer really doesn’t know her history.

“Elizabeth Bathory, love,” I said. “Famous for it. One of my more notable forebears, in the vampiric line. Tell Giles, he’ll give you the details. But what she’s most famous for is bathing in the blood of virgins. Thousands of them. Kept her young, so it’s said.”

*

“But you’re not old, my love,” I had said, in desperation. Because even back then, when I was barely sixty, I knew a thankless errand when my beloved sent me on one. 

Drusilla had turned her depthless eyes to me, and pouted gently. “I saw it, Spike,” she murmured, so low I had to duck close to hear, and so sweet I could have eaten her, starting with the toes. “Bathed in the blood of virgins. Bleed them for me?”

Well. I’d tried. And in those days I had quite the squad to assist me, so we made a good fist of it. London in ’27 heaved with virgins, all those women whose lovers hadn’t made it through the Flanders mud, poor saps, and whose broken life-dreams had led them to the big city and to bedsits, boarding houses and boredom. It wasn’t hard to pluck these surplus women from across the city, never taking too many from one place. They got little respect, these poor birds. Downtrodden yet unreliable, if one had to characterise their public image. I never heard a whisper that there was something more going on than them running off with a sailor, or home to mother, or perhaps into the toils of white slavers, thank the tabloids for inventing such cobblers as cover.

So, that part wasn’t hard. What was _bloody_ hard, if you’ll pardon the pun, was the bathing. See, blood coagulates once you get it out, and a bath is a big cold space, and you can’t keep it warm for too long or you get blood soup, full of stringy strands, and also, it takes a lot of humans to fill one tub. Especially the deluxe ivory porcelain job I’d got for Dru to do her bathing in. It was a beauty – claw-footed, freestanding, deep as you like, but there was no denying it was hard to fill. The shrieking of the victims started to get me down as the procession meandered on. The waste of arterial spray when one of the minions cut carelessly led me to fury, and staking the workforce didn’t get me nearer my goal.

First time I showed Dru the bath, it was barely four inches deep in blood, and I had to admit it lacked grandeur. She didn’t say a word, but pulled her robe back on and wandered off to play with Miss Edith and a Bright Young Thing we’d brought home accidentally who wasn’t qualified for a bath victim. 

I tried. I really did. Second time, we at least got Dru into a bath deep enough to cover her essentials, but it lacked a sense of glory. She sat, shivering a little, for a half hour to please me and make her point, then trailed disconsolately off to bed, without indicating I should follow. The bathroom was a sordid thing, after, all slipped-blood handprints and smudges on the billowing drapes I’d hung for extra style. 

I’ve never tried it since, but take it from me: bathing in the blood of however-so-many virgins is a mug’s game. Can’t believe sensible vamps still bother with it. 

*

Buffy waved a hand in front of my eyes. “Earth to Spike?” 

“Sorry, love. Lot of memory there.” Had to be honest, though I could see it hurt her. She’s not _jealous_ of Dru, per se, not least because she can see who I chose, over and over, when the easy thing would have been to stick with my own world. But she hates to think of me with Dru even more than me the freelance killer of hundreds. Not sure why, but there’s a rivalry there, somehow. Something to do with me being easily influenced and what happens when the Slayer dies and I find another love, I reckon. (Haven’t told her I’ve not the least intent for that to happen. Slayer dies, I die too, preferably at the heart of a battle, but I’ll make it happen however I need, when it comes. Not a lot of tactics yet, but my strategy is set.)

She shook it off, because when there’s work to be done she always does. And with me still up to my elbow in human gore, she was probably quite aware of pressure of work. I was glad, too. It was making me peckish, personally, old and cold though it was. She probably knew that.

“Okay,” she said, decisive. “Clear it up.” 

I yanked out the plug, and hoped the plumbing was up to scratch. Not that blood isn’t perfectly liquid stuff when you start, but this cold sludge was likely going to be a challenge. But the plumbing proved as mediocrely 90s-adequate at the tub, draining the lifeblood of a couple of dozen human beings with little more effort than it would have taken to rid itself of a bubble bath. I sluiced it around a couple of times with water, once it was obvious there was nothing solid in the mess that might tell us more. There wasn’t any bleach in the place, else I’d have cleaned up better, too. Just because the Slayer looked that sick at the sight. 

Looking down at myself, I realised there might be other reasons for her looking that nauseous. “Sorry.” I ran the hot tap a while, trying to get my arm clean. No nailbrush either, which confirmed my impression of the former occupant of this apartment. There’s slinky ultimate evil, and then there’s slobbish. The drying blood settled in the creases of my fingers, around my nailbeds. Since my paint job was flaking worse than usual, not helped by the extended bloodbath, my hands were a sight now. Black and white and red all over, that was Spike today.

“Doesn’t matter,” she said. It was near-dark out, but we’d likely take the sewers back to the Council offices anyway. Unlikely I’d be arrested for blood on my hands. Not that that was what I’d apologised for, but if the Slayer wanted to be all pragmatic and unemotional, I could do likewise. Dammit. Would it be one of those nights when she needed her space? Still shook me every time, though I knew she’d come back to me once she’d had time to shed those images that were dancing behind her lids right now, of me and lakes of blood, and the knowledge my past would have filled this bathroom many times over, never mind the damn tub. 

“’Kay,” I said, and finally straightened up from my hunched kneel over the tub o’doom. 

Which, it turned out, was bang-on timing, as the cheap MDF door behind Buffy suddenly creaked open, and it emerged that we had made some wrong assumptions about exactly which vamp had been making use of the blood of virgins trick. Not the cute little wench we’d dusted earlier downstairs, nor her faithful swain, who I’d had down as the sucker who’d been on the find-and-drain duty for his lady-love. That pair hadn’t had fifty years between them. Whereas this one-

Look, I’m not saying it was Elizabeth Bathory herself. Not least cos I reckon this one was older. She was halfway to the Master in the old frozen-face-look, and her pale, pale skin was starting to crinkle and wither. Give her a millennium, she’d look the full Turok-Han. Which, presumably, explained the search for a skin cure that had cost so many lives. I wondered how many fledges she’d had on the prowl for her beauty lotion. Experience suggested quite a few, even for a bath so small and cold as this had been, which meant we had more of a nest to clear than we’d known.

“Couldn’t just go for some fillers, huh?” I said, relatively calmly considering the Slayer was awfully close to the vampire with her back turned when the thing started coming through the door. Not that Buffy hadn’t been in motion the second before I’d realised what was afoot, but it doesn’t do to underestimate a Master. They have thrall like some of us have debased forms of martial arts and excellent gymnastic form. And she, the nameless Master vampire, was moving faster than I liked, too. 

She sounded almost amused, for all she dodged the Slayer’s first kick-and-stab at a fair lick. “I didn’t realise I had visitors. But do, please, make yourselves at home.”

Buffy tried a sweep-slash, and I leapt for the monster’s head, aiming for a neck lock that would leave her breast exposed to a tidy stake. No chance. We fell into one another as the Master vamp slid soundlessly out of trouble. Our next few moves went the same way, till we were in more danger of hurting each other than her. Reminded me a tad uncomfortably of fighting Glory, the only other time the Slayer and I in tag-team hasn’t been a world-beating combo. I could see in Buffy’s face that she was ruffled, too. 

Meanwhile, our ancient hostess was talking. You could tell she was a proper Master, that way. Never know when to shut up, they don’t. (Not that I can talk, yes, yes. No need to chip in there.) “What on Earth do we have here? Such feisty specimens. And- Oh I _see_. You’re one of the little Slayer mob. I’d heard you’d bred like cockroaches.”

Which is a good way to rile Buffy, if you need one. She loves her Slayerettes, would die for the unworthy bunch of kids, but there’s a smidge of her that knows, deep down, that she’s the one, the only, truly original Slayer in the bunch. And she likes supervillains to know that, before she guts them. I had a bad feeling she might stop to explain, so took on the next attack myself pretty sharpish. With, admittedly, as little effect as before, except that she stopped taunting Buffy and turned over to me. 

“Rogue vampire, too? I’ve heard about you. Gypsy curse, wasn’t it?”

Well. You can guess how that made me feel. I lost a bit of time to a few whirlwind attacks. May have shouted a bit about soul quests and there being more than one path to redemption on the vampire road. May have. When I caught up with my consciousness again, I found I’d put myself in a nasty situation, and the Master vamp had one of my own stakes all too close to my heart. Careless. I shouldn’t keep them in the back of my belt, I know. Getting pickpocketed of your own death weapon is right embarrassing. Wouldn’t’ve happened if I’d still had the duster on, but it was over by the tub still, and no use in the present extremity at all. 

Luckily, Buffy has a protective streak that leads to extreme targeted violence, and it was my plight that drove her into one of those fluid, perfect moves that make me hard in three seconds flat. She had the vamp pinned, me freed, and a knife pinioning one shrivelled shoulder before I’d recovered from the rush of lust, and was punching the Master with a good, easy rhythm to boot. 

“Where are they?” she gritted, one word per punch, and it was going to take more than a few healing bloodbaths before that vampiric visage got back to presentable. 

Buffy paused, long enough for the vamp to enquire, “Who?” Pretty cool, that, in the circs. I gave her some reluctant style points, despite her crusty apartment.

“Your dead virgins,” said Buffy, quieter and without the punching. 

The vamp laughed. “My dear. Hardly a virgin among them, I’m sure. Even the spottiest of the nerds, one can’t be sure any more. Youth is the thing, anyway.” As if Buffy had been asking for beauty tips. She paused, theatrically inhaling before her big reveal. “I boiled their bones, little Slayer. What did you think? I have minions to feed, after all. Delicious human soup for my little ones.”

Buffy’s face twisted with nausea, and the Master heaved upward in a final throw of the dice. But she underestimated the Slayer, and she underestimated me, and there were two stakes in the black cavern of her heart before she dusted. 

I watched with interest. Never seen a really old vamp get hers before. The survival of the bones shook me a bit. Not as much as Buffy’s look, though. One part sorrow for those dead kids, no doubt, but a whole other big part bad memories. I’ve heard enough about the Sunnydale Master and her first death to know some of what was going on in her head, at least. 

“C’m on.” I stood, dusting off my knees and offering her a hand up from the floor like the gentleman I’m not. “I’ll call Giles for a cleanup crew. They’ll salt the bones or whatever, and bury any remnants of the innocents they can find. Let’s get off home and have a nice hot ba- _shower_. Shower. Till we feel warm again.”

She nodded, a little curled into me and far from the space-needing creature she had been before the Master vamp turned up. ‘Fraid I’m not above taking advantage of her sad days, so I cuddled her up close while we waited for the Council worker bees to show up and get down to the dull work. 

She looked a little better by the time we got into the sewers, and a whole lot more once we got home to bed. I was able to show my appreciation for the best of her moves in traditional style, and she slept fast and deep after. No Master nightmares, recent or old. Well done me.

I wondered who this new nameless ex-Master was, though. I’d have liked to know, for tradition. Probably set the Watcher on it, come to think. That’d get his juices running and get me some answers all at once. 

Meanwhile, this night’s work hadn’t given me any reason to change my mind on more important matters. Hope I die before I get old. Fully intend to, in fact. You won’t find me in the blood of a thousand virgins, worrying about my jawline. I know what really matters in life.

 

***


End file.
